Engagement is about more than just numbers
Christopher Penn shared an article this morning about the next big thing in digital marketing — engagement scoring being tied into influence. He sites YouTube’s recent announcement that they are entertaining a new system of search ranking that would factor in how many viewers watched the full video. The concept is not entirely new as many of us have considered the size of a content creator’s audience when asking for guest blog posts. But size is not engagement. Have you given any thought to what this slight change of measurement would do for your organization?
Member-based organizations like associations and chambers of commerce are leaders in their representative industries. They are the go-to organizations for content and advocacy. With an abundance of industry knowledge and content, many organizations have leveraged this as part of the rationale behind joining their organization. Social media adoption has given wings to much of the content but many groups keep the most valuable pieces – such as industry benchmarking reports — behind a gated, members-only online community.
For those organizations involved in social media, how many of us track engagement? Sure, we’re delighted when new followers and likes appear on our profiles but what metrics are we measuring when it comes to member engagement? If you have a YouTube channel (or other video-sharing platform) are you just looking at raw numbers of hits or are you factoring in length of view? For your website are you looking at visitors or bounce rate or both? Does bounce rate even matter anymore if visitors are only coming to your website for an article you tweeted and then leaving? In this case your bounce rate will be high but your visitors got what they came for (and hopefully shared it along the way) so does that count?
Anyone working with statistics knows that numbers don’t lie but which numbers you use are critical to your argument. Are you measuring your community’s success based on visits or engagement? Does it matter?
